Caitlyn I cried reading this. My 17 yr old has been asking me everyday what I think about this situation and do I think it’ll happen. It keeps him up at night. Keeps both of us up at night. Idk what to say to him. My husband tells him it’s never going to happen but my husband doesn’t pay attention to what’s really going on. As you said, he’s sleepwalking to extinction. My son and I pay attention. Because I don’t want to torture him anymore I tell him I hope that our leaders come to senses. But listening to them say stupid stuff like mini nuclear war I’m not so sure. I know it won’t be Putin who strikes first. He is the only leader that is making any sense at the moment. I don’t trust the powers that be in the west one bit. It’s just so incredibly terrifying and sad that these ppl have our lives in their hands. We didn’t vote for this and we didn’t vote to have our tax dollars spent like this.
And yes, America is the most propagandized place on the planet. Another fantastic piece!
Sadly, the only major leader I trust now is Putin, and I have felt that way since the 2016 presidential campaign. Comparing him to the fools that were running in the US was like comparing a philosophy professor to a pair of Barnum & Bailey clowns.
He seems to be ruled by logical thinking and he hasn't yet given way to any emotional outbursts.
If a nuclear exchange happens, he won't be the one to have started it.
I'm sorry that you and your son are so scared. I guess I'm inured, since my generation had to hide under our flimsy wooden school desks in order to protect ourselves from a nuclear catastrophe. As I curled up down there, I knew that wouldn't work!
I sure hope you're right. I do believe there's a growing number starting to question some of the propaganda, but we've still got a way to go until the majority are out of danger.
But, but, but ... Russia signed a treaty in 1994 to respect Ukraine's borders!!!
(I actually heard this one again just the other day. As if the only thing that's changed in the world since 1994 was that Vlad the Bad took charge of Russia and decided to put all agreements and international law into his paper shredder. SMH.)
The "treaty" wasn't a treaty, and in 2012, the United States, a party to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, insisted that this instrument was non-binding, when it sanctioned Byelorus in contravention of the same.
"Maybe my government is actually in the wrong here and is just lying and manipulating to advance its own interests?" I liked this line from Caitlin's article. Here's why:
I grew up in the 1980s when it was normal for people to think that government was tyrannical, clumsy, stupid, and vicious. Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to your problems. Government is the problem." He later said, "A nuclear war can never be won and should never be fought."
I wonder: what the hell happened to that skepticism? I think it got swallowed by stone-cold evil neo-con-artists like Bill Kristol, Victoria Nuland, and John Bolton. About Bolton, Trump said, "He wants to go to war with everybody!"
And W and Obama went right along with the neo-con attempts to kill millions and take over the world.
This is the biggest problem with every good movement whether it is on the left, right, or uncategorizable--it gets hijacked by pretenders/sociopaths like Bill Kristol, Victoria Nuland, & John Bolton.
The funny thing about quoting Reagan is the he paved the way for those Neo-cons and furthered US imperialist goals. Iran-Contra, arming the Taliban in Afghanistan for a proxy war with the USSR (sound familiar?), Panama, Libya, Persian Gulf...
You are being swayed by looking for truth in a fake system. When Nixon won in a landslide, the Democrats were still a Party of disparate loyalties. Unions, laborers and professionals were all represented, but it had no corporate backers, and, if Jimmy Carter is viewed as an anomaly, the DP looked to be incapable of gaining the WH. Reagan’s two terms only cemented that perception. Then the Clintons happened, and the DP instantly became Republican-lite. If elections could change our trajectory, they’d be outlawed.
I partially agree, and partially disagree. I think our system is fake.
Fake food.
Fake pharma.
Fake jobs.
Fake, printed money.
Fake two-party system.
Senile president who is lucid when jacked up on adderall.
Fake cultural divisions meant to distract us.
A terrible education system.
A media system that re-enforces the dominant narrative.
And, as a side note, I oppose the Great Reset. I think they want us fat, sick, isolated, and depressed, so that they can extract as much economic value as possible from us, right before they kill us.
Since so much is fake, perhaps this is why 1/2 of America thinks the last election was stolen, and that many more elections have been stolen, as well.
If the election system were 100% transparent in America and other Western nations, my bet is that we would have a lot more peace, and a lot less paranoia and threats. But I can't prove that, of course. But I think all good things start with honesty, and all bad things begin with dishonesty.
I doubt that the number of Americans that believe Trump won the last election is anywhere close to one-tenth let alone one-half. Trump’s inner circle in the WH all confirmed that Trump knew he didn’t win. He’s a con artist’s con artist.
If you view peace as a worthwhile aspiration, why in hell would you believe a word from a consummate liar whose only way of winning over supporters is to divide and put group against group? He champions the Christian Right because they have political sway, they are right-wing and fanatical, and loads of them are racists. And they vote as a bloc.
I don’t know what the numbers are, but many voters are learning that the whole process is a corporate theatrical production. Transparency would require that no money is involved, and TV ads are banned. It would also facilitate the formation of multiple parties. This is basic to any process looking to be seen as legitimate, and these things will never happen because the billionaires know that cannot win elections that cannot be controlled.
Oh so right on the money! This is all the 20 pounds of shit in a 10 pound bag! Ask Ralph Nader and Jill Stein how they see the election process in this oh so democratic system! It's all controlled by a criminal organization that let's mass murders play war!
Well, I think your numbers are incorrect, and your labels are pejorative. But perhaps we can agree that we should both do whatever we can to avert a nuclear war.
I mean you no derision. If you love cheddar-head, that is on you. If you are an evangelical, how do you square the chasm between your professed beliefs and the pandering vitriol spewed from his crooked mouth? As for a war in our near future, I do believe it is the billionaires who see their global control at risk, and will risk all of us to defend it. Peace, Tim.
Maybe the reason people seem indifferent to what is going on in Ukraine, at least in the States, is that war has been a part of our lives for almost 2 decades, They come and they go, and we have never suffered the consequences. Well those in the military, have, but so few by comparison with those killed in Afghanistan , Iraq, Syria, Libya, and all those in our Drone wars. Some even know about our complicity in a genocide in Yemen. I guess many think the war in Ukraine will also come and go like the others.
The only way to resolve this is to call for a new global financial architecture and multipolar alliance based on a common vision for mankind. They’re depending on there not being anyone capable of offering a viable long term vision of economic cooperation and new generational projects that allow us to rebuild what globalization has destroyed. It’s been done before and the enemy is currently sitting on the largest financial bubble in humans history. We should cancel all the funny money and then have nations create the credit necessary to build new great projects that give people a vision of the future for themselves, there families, and society generally.
Whatever problems people want to point out, the Chinese and Russian civilizations, the BRICS and SCO are committed to doing just that.
Hey! I just love most of your work Caitlin, and I have started translating some of your articles to Swedish, in hope of broadening your following and spreading your ideas and thoughts. It is sorely needed here in Sweden, where we may not have a US-style MSM that lies about EVERYTHING, but it’s not much better. And it’s gotten notably and noticeably worse over the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. It might just as well *BE* US MSM articles, unquestioned and directly translated into Swedish, to be pushed on the masses here.
Hey! Jag älskar det mesta av Caitlins alster och jag har börjat översätta en del av hennes artiklar till svenska, med förhoppningen att öka hennes följarskara och sprida hennes idéer och tankar.
If the US hasn't also been trying to foment an uprising in the EU, then it really has its head up a dark place: it is simply unbelievable. The US knows exactly what it's doing. Game playing is its favourite occupation - speculating on every possible outcome of every possible move. And no action, no matter how mad, is made without a reason, an agenda. And it seems to me, fascism is the objective. There will be blood, and that will be returned in spades by militarized police and security. Fascism will seem the solution, and not unwelcome. I think a well-known intellectual said something like that a while ago. If someone has a more plausible theory, Id like to hear it.
With many credits of Russian history, I know the US has no business in the Ukraine and meddling in European politics. G Washington and Ike were right. When will the sheeple wake up.
"This is all completely unnecessary." Absolutely correct. Just the US ceasing interventions overseas would go a long, long way towards curing what ails the world. Negotiating an end to all nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and defoliants, biological weapons, and landmines (all indiscriminate weapons of mass and/or post-conflict destruction) would get us a lot closer. Power is the disease, and the love of power is the root of all evil.
When did liberalism embrace war? When did liberals become war mongers?
Stop Putin’s aggressions and promote democracy is their own argument. Caitlin says this leaves out their provocations, provocations which suggest they want war. She suggests they could have avoided this war in the first place and now are refusing to pursue obvious avenues for negotiation of a ceasefire.
Why? Is it because progress is a religion and progressives are religious zealots? Do they have special knowledge, superior knowledge about right and wrong that compels them to act this way? Is this global phenomenon a pursuit of truth? Have they replaced god with themselves? Do they possess special knowledge and pursue it in the name of righteousness and humanity and freedom and dignity and compassion and honesty and all that is holy? Does this mean it’s a religion? Is this Gnosticism: special knowledge? Is their plan rational or is faith based, which is to say beyond human rational inquiry and grounded in human intuition and feelings?
When did liberals change into religious adherents or was it always thus?
This: "We could have such a beautiful world. All the energy we pour into competition and conquest could go toward innovation that benefits us all, making sure everyone has enough, eliminating human suffering and the need for human toil. We're trading heaven on earth for elite ego games."
I vote for making a heaven on earth and for an end to all elite ego games! Outlaw the elite, their egos and all their horrific games that threaten all life on this planet!
I mean I have been screaming the same thing. Love the article. It is disgusting how the talk of nuclear war is just like someone reading the next step In a recipe. No one even says what about the people that didn’t want any of this? I think that is what bothers me the most. They all blame Putin or China yet NONE EVER SAY ANYTHING ABOUT BE WILLING TO KILL ALL THE INNOCENT NON WAR PEOPLE. I mean that new British PM lady was all about making sure everyone knew she would push the button for nukes in a heartbeat. That was sick but what made it worse is that never did she mention caring about everyone and everything she was killing by pushing that button. None of them ever do. I mean I guess when u have a safe place to go to during nuclear war the rest of the people don’t matter. N since NO ONE In any government has mention us we know that we don’t matter to them. N to these people on mainstream media acting like it’s Putin to China. I could t agree more IT WONT MATTER. When ur holding ur family and knowing that it’s about to over I bet y won’t be saying damn u Putin or CHina. ur going wonder how our government isnt coming to get u. Then u realize that u got used and left for dead. To push and sell their war agenda. They didn’t care about u or ur family. U want trump on documents. Yet ur son is trafficking hoes and buying a gun as a felon and oh that’s right weighing and doing crack on social
Media and that shit didn’t even make the front page. If that was trumps kids Trump would be impeached and in jail. I’m call all this HOE LOGIC.
They needed u to say and back them and nothing more. So they can keep shoveling money to where ever it’s going and I think it’s
I like the parallel with the bridge jumpers. I read some stories of survivors of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, and that almost universal instant regret struck me.
Caitlyn I cried reading this. My 17 yr old has been asking me everyday what I think about this situation and do I think it’ll happen. It keeps him up at night. Keeps both of us up at night. Idk what to say to him. My husband tells him it’s never going to happen but my husband doesn’t pay attention to what’s really going on. As you said, he’s sleepwalking to extinction. My son and I pay attention. Because I don’t want to torture him anymore I tell him I hope that our leaders come to senses. But listening to them say stupid stuff like mini nuclear war I’m not so sure. I know it won’t be Putin who strikes first. He is the only leader that is making any sense at the moment. I don’t trust the powers that be in the west one bit. It’s just so incredibly terrifying and sad that these ppl have our lives in their hands. We didn’t vote for this and we didn’t vote to have our tax dollars spent like this.
And yes, America is the most propagandized place on the planet. Another fantastic piece!
Sadly, the only major leader I trust now is Putin, and I have felt that way since the 2016 presidential campaign. Comparing him to the fools that were running in the US was like comparing a philosophy professor to a pair of Barnum & Bailey clowns.
He seems to be ruled by logical thinking and he hasn't yet given way to any emotional outbursts.
If a nuclear exchange happens, he won't be the one to have started it.
I'm sorry that you and your son are so scared. I guess I'm inured, since my generation had to hide under our flimsy wooden school desks in order to protect ourselves from a nuclear catastrophe. As I curled up down there, I knew that wouldn't work!
Fortunately, fewer and fewer people believe Western propaganda any longer!
I sure hope you're right. I do believe there's a growing number starting to question some of the propaganda, but we've still got a way to go until the majority are out of danger.
Tony Blinken and Tony Fauci are gonna switch jobs, and no one will blink nor notice
Do you know what killed propaganda for me?
The "vaccine."
The sheer pointlessness of the masks.
BLM and their $$.
Ukraine. I know all about how NATO was not supposed to expand past Germany, but since then, we've added about 16 nations to it.
I can't believe anything PMSNBC or most other conventional media channels say.
But, but, but ... Russia signed a treaty in 1994 to respect Ukraine's borders!!!
(I actually heard this one again just the other day. As if the only thing that's changed in the world since 1994 was that Vlad the Bad took charge of Russia and decided to put all agreements and international law into his paper shredder. SMH.)
The "treaty" wasn't a treaty, and in 2012, the United States, a party to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, insisted that this instrument was non-binding, when it sanctioned Byelorus in contravention of the same.
I hope you also apply this logic to:
jan 6 was antifa
Trump won
Defund the FBI
MAGA & American exceptionalism
Anything on FOX, OANN, Daily Wire, etc
"Maybe my government is actually in the wrong here and is just lying and manipulating to advance its own interests?" I liked this line from Caitlin's article. Here's why:
I grew up in the 1980s when it was normal for people to think that government was tyrannical, clumsy, stupid, and vicious. Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to your problems. Government is the problem." He later said, "A nuclear war can never be won and should never be fought."
I wonder: what the hell happened to that skepticism? I think it got swallowed by stone-cold evil neo-con-artists like Bill Kristol, Victoria Nuland, and John Bolton. About Bolton, Trump said, "He wants to go to war with everybody!"
And W and Obama went right along with the neo-con attempts to kill millions and take over the world.
This is the biggest problem with every good movement whether it is on the left, right, or uncategorizable--it gets hijacked by pretenders/sociopaths like Bill Kristol, Victoria Nuland, & John Bolton.
The funny thing about quoting Reagan is the he paved the way for those Neo-cons and furthered US imperialist goals. Iran-Contra, arming the Taliban in Afghanistan for a proxy war with the USSR (sound familiar?), Panama, Libya, Persian Gulf...
You are being swayed by looking for truth in a fake system. When Nixon won in a landslide, the Democrats were still a Party of disparate loyalties. Unions, laborers and professionals were all represented, but it had no corporate backers, and, if Jimmy Carter is viewed as an anomaly, the DP looked to be incapable of gaining the WH. Reagan’s two terms only cemented that perception. Then the Clintons happened, and the DP instantly became Republican-lite. If elections could change our trajectory, they’d be outlawed.
I partially agree, and partially disagree. I think our system is fake.
Fake food.
Fake pharma.
Fake jobs.
Fake, printed money.
Fake two-party system.
Senile president who is lucid when jacked up on adderall.
Fake cultural divisions meant to distract us.
A terrible education system.
A media system that re-enforces the dominant narrative.
And, as a side note, I oppose the Great Reset. I think they want us fat, sick, isolated, and depressed, so that they can extract as much economic value as possible from us, right before they kill us.
Since so much is fake, perhaps this is why 1/2 of America thinks the last election was stolen, and that many more elections have been stolen, as well.
If the election system were 100% transparent in America and other Western nations, my bet is that we would have a lot more peace, and a lot less paranoia and threats. But I can't prove that, of course. But I think all good things start with honesty, and all bad things begin with dishonesty.
Thank you for helping me think, Unwarranted.
I doubt that the number of Americans that believe Trump won the last election is anywhere close to one-tenth let alone one-half. Trump’s inner circle in the WH all confirmed that Trump knew he didn’t win. He’s a con artist’s con artist.
If you view peace as a worthwhile aspiration, why in hell would you believe a word from a consummate liar whose only way of winning over supporters is to divide and put group against group? He champions the Christian Right because they have political sway, they are right-wing and fanatical, and loads of them are racists. And they vote as a bloc.
I don’t know what the numbers are, but many voters are learning that the whole process is a corporate theatrical production. Transparency would require that no money is involved, and TV ads are banned. It would also facilitate the formation of multiple parties. This is basic to any process looking to be seen as legitimate, and these things will never happen because the billionaires know that cannot win elections that cannot be controlled.
Oh so right on the money! This is all the 20 pounds of shit in a 10 pound bag! Ask Ralph Nader and Jill Stein how they see the election process in this oh so democratic system! It's all controlled by a criminal organization that let's mass murders play war!
Well, I think your numbers are incorrect, and your labels are pejorative. But perhaps we can agree that we should both do whatever we can to avert a nuclear war.
I wish you well.
I mean you no derision. If you love cheddar-head, that is on you. If you are an evangelical, how do you square the chasm between your professed beliefs and the pandering vitriol spewed from his crooked mouth? As for a war in our near future, I do believe it is the billionaires who see their global control at risk, and will risk all of us to defend it. Peace, Tim.
Maybe the reason people seem indifferent to what is going on in Ukraine, at least in the States, is that war has been a part of our lives for almost 2 decades, They come and they go, and we have never suffered the consequences. Well those in the military, have, but so few by comparison with those killed in Afghanistan , Iraq, Syria, Libya, and all those in our Drone wars. Some even know about our complicity in a genocide in Yemen. I guess many think the war in Ukraine will also come and go like the others.
The only way to resolve this is to call for a new global financial architecture and multipolar alliance based on a common vision for mankind. They’re depending on there not being anyone capable of offering a viable long term vision of economic cooperation and new generational projects that allow us to rebuild what globalization has destroyed. It’s been done before and the enemy is currently sitting on the largest financial bubble in humans history. We should cancel all the funny money and then have nations create the credit necessary to build new great projects that give people a vision of the future for themselves, there families, and society generally.
Whatever problems people want to point out, the Chinese and Russian civilizations, the BRICS and SCO are committed to doing just that.
Time to wake up.
A+
Hey! I just love most of your work Caitlin, and I have started translating some of your articles to Swedish, in hope of broadening your following and spreading your ideas and thoughts. It is sorely needed here in Sweden, where we may not have a US-style MSM that lies about EVERYTHING, but it’s not much better. And it’s gotten notably and noticeably worse over the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. It might just as well *BE* US MSM articles, unquestioned and directly translated into Swedish, to be pushed on the masses here.
Here is a link to this article in Swedish: https://niclashallander.substack.com/p/det-mest-kraftfulla-vapnet-vast-gav
Hey! Jag älskar det mesta av Caitlins alster och jag har börjat översätta en del av hennes artiklar till svenska, med förhoppningen att öka hennes följarskara och sprida hennes idéer och tankar.
Här är en länk till denna artikel på svenska: https://niclashallander.substack.com/p/det-mest-kraftfulla-vapnet-vast-gav
If the US hasn't also been trying to foment an uprising in the EU, then it really has its head up a dark place: it is simply unbelievable. The US knows exactly what it's doing. Game playing is its favourite occupation - speculating on every possible outcome of every possible move. And no action, no matter how mad, is made without a reason, an agenda. And it seems to me, fascism is the objective. There will be blood, and that will be returned in spades by militarized police and security. Fascism will seem the solution, and not unwelcome. I think a well-known intellectual said something like that a while ago. If someone has a more plausible theory, Id like to hear it.
With many credits of Russian history, I know the US has no business in the Ukraine and meddling in European politics. G Washington and Ike were right. When will the sheeple wake up.
"This is all completely unnecessary." Absolutely correct. Just the US ceasing interventions overseas would go a long, long way towards curing what ails the world. Negotiating an end to all nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and defoliants, biological weapons, and landmines (all indiscriminate weapons of mass and/or post-conflict destruction) would get us a lot closer. Power is the disease, and the love of power is the root of all evil.
Most people take their outrage cues from their media ecosystem and nobody within that ecosystem has communicated to them just how serious this all is.
When did liberalism embrace war? When did liberals become war mongers?
Stop Putin’s aggressions and promote democracy is their own argument. Caitlin says this leaves out their provocations, provocations which suggest they want war. She suggests they could have avoided this war in the first place and now are refusing to pursue obvious avenues for negotiation of a ceasefire.
Why? Is it because progress is a religion and progressives are religious zealots? Do they have special knowledge, superior knowledge about right and wrong that compels them to act this way? Is this global phenomenon a pursuit of truth? Have they replaced god with themselves? Do they possess special knowledge and pursue it in the name of righteousness and humanity and freedom and dignity and compassion and honesty and all that is holy? Does this mean it’s a religion? Is this Gnosticism: special knowledge? Is their plan rational or is faith based, which is to say beyond human rational inquiry and grounded in human intuition and feelings?
When did liberals change into religious adherents or was it always thus?
It's a cult.
Weather it's Blue MAGA or Red MAGA it's all liberalism
This: "We could have such a beautiful world. All the energy we pour into competition and conquest could go toward innovation that benefits us all, making sure everyone has enough, eliminating human suffering and the need for human toil. We're trading heaven on earth for elite ego games."
I vote for making a heaven on earth and for an end to all elite ego games! Outlaw the elite, their egos and all their horrific games that threaten all life on this planet!
I mean I have been screaming the same thing. Love the article. It is disgusting how the talk of nuclear war is just like someone reading the next step In a recipe. No one even says what about the people that didn’t want any of this? I think that is what bothers me the most. They all blame Putin or China yet NONE EVER SAY ANYTHING ABOUT BE WILLING TO KILL ALL THE INNOCENT NON WAR PEOPLE. I mean that new British PM lady was all about making sure everyone knew she would push the button for nukes in a heartbeat. That was sick but what made it worse is that never did she mention caring about everyone and everything she was killing by pushing that button. None of them ever do. I mean I guess when u have a safe place to go to during nuclear war the rest of the people don’t matter. N since NO ONE In any government has mention us we know that we don’t matter to them. N to these people on mainstream media acting like it’s Putin to China. I could t agree more IT WONT MATTER. When ur holding ur family and knowing that it’s about to over I bet y won’t be saying damn u Putin or CHina. ur going wonder how our government isnt coming to get u. Then u realize that u got used and left for dead. To push and sell their war agenda. They didn’t care about u or ur family. U want trump on documents. Yet ur son is trafficking hoes and buying a gun as a felon and oh that’s right weighing and doing crack on social
Media and that shit didn’t even make the front page. If that was trumps kids Trump would be impeached and in jail. I’m call all this HOE LOGIC.
They needed u to say and back them and nothing more. So they can keep shoveling money to where ever it’s going and I think it’s
I like the parallel with the bridge jumpers. I read some stories of survivors of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, and that almost universal instant regret struck me.